When Paul McKinney, a farmer in northeast Arkansas, thinks of his son’s childhood, he remembers a small boy playing in vast fields.
To a child, a flooded rice field is “like a giant, ۴۰-acre swimming pool”, he said.
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Rice has been a staple on McKinney’s farm for four generations. Next year, however, the family plans to plant much less. Instead, they will focus on soya, a crop that is cheaper to produce.
Like farmers across the United States, McKinney is making tough decisions this year in response to higher fuel and fertiliser costs, which have skyrocketed since the start of the war on Iran.
This week, farmers also face tough choices at the polls. Democrats are expected to make gains in the midterm elections, as voters react to high prices economy-wide by switching parties or staying home.
Observers are watching farm country closely. Texas and Kansas could send Democrats to the Senate for the first time in decades. In the House of Representatives, two majority-rural districts, Wisconsin’s Third and North Carolina First, could become tipping points for Democratic control.
Still, many of the country’s most rural areas, like Arkansas, are also its most safely Republican.
That leaves an uphill battle for Democrat Hallie Shoffner, who quit farming last year to challenge Republican Senator Tom Cotton in a campaign squarely focused on rising costs.
How high costs hurt farmers
Even before the US-Israel war on Iran, high input costs were straining farmers, said Ryan Loy, an extension economist for the University of Arkansas’ Division of Agriculture.
Loy pointed to a trade war with China that began in ۲۰۱۸, the ongoing war in Ukraine and disruptions related to the ۲۰۲۵ tariffs as factors driving up input costs and disrupting markets. A drought across the US heartland, made worse by climate change, has added to the strain.
Farmers across the country are working to adapt. In Arkansas, many farmers skipped rice in favour of soya. Soya is “the least input-intensive crop, and perhaps can break even or have the shallowest loss”, Loy said.
Now Arkansas, usually the country’s top rice producer, has its lowest rice acreage since the ۱۹۷۰s. Many farmers hoped ۲۰۲۶ would bring economic recovery so they could return to rice.
Then, the war on Iran hit. With the Strait of Hormuz blocked, fertiliser costs jumped just as farmers were fertilising during the spring planting season.
Loy tracked the increase in a sample budget that he maintains for Arkansas row crop farmers. “Urea fertiliser specifically peaked about ۳۹ percent over our budgeted amount,” Loy said. Diesel costs came in about ۷۲ percent more than budget averaged across the planting, growing and harvesting seasons, Loy found.
Those changes represent a significant economic hit. “For our state alone, it’s an additional cost of about $۳۴۳m,” Loy said.
Last week, US President Donald Trump announced an $۸bn fuel relief programme for farmers, following $۱۲bn in tariff-related aid in ۲۰۲۵. If the fuel relief payment were divided equally between the ۵۰ states, it would cover less than half of the extra costs that Loy estimates Arkansas’ farmers paid this year.
McKinney, a member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said the announcement was welcome. Still, he hoped for longer-term solutions that would prevent “this constant battle for survival”.
For many farms, survival is indeed getting harder. Farm bankruptcies for the first three quarters of ۲۰۲۶ were up ۱۹ percent compared to this time last year, according to a recent analysis by the University of Arkansas’ National Agricultural Law Center. They were up ۷۳ percent compared to ۲۰۲۴.
‘We can’t keep doing this’
McKinney’s son, who grew up playing in muddy rice fields, now helps his dad farm their ۲۴,۰۰۰ acres. So does McKinney’s nephew, who this year is driving a combine.
“As has been done for us, we would love to be able to hand that down to the next generation,” said McKinney. “But you also have to think about what is going to be best for them.”
McKinney questions how long farming will provide a sustainable living. “It’s some heavy things to think about,” McKinney said.
For Shoffner, a sixth-generation Arkansas farmer, that reckoning came last year.
Higher costs, lower crop prices and the uncertainty of trade wars and tariffs “made the numbers stop working” for their ۲,۰۰۰-acre farm operation, Shoffner told Al Jazeera.
“I know what it feels like to work hard, make every adjustment you can, and still have to sit down with your family and say, ‘We can’t keep doing this,’” Shoffner said.
To protect her parents’ land and retirement, Shoffner closed the family’s farm. That “heartbreaking” decision helped spur her Senate run.
“I decided that if I can’t farm, I will fight,” Shoffner said.
If elected, Shoffner wants to end the war on Iran, build trade policies farmers “can actually plan around”, invest in local processing and distribution, and pass a robust Farm Bill — strategies she hopes will help farmers and rural economies more broadly.
“If we want rural communities to have a future, the people producing our food have to be able to make a living doing it.”
Cotton did not respond to a request for comment.
How will farmers vote?
Economic pain may not change farmers’ votes, however, in Arkansas or nationwide. Michael Shepherd, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said many farmers, like many rural voters, are committed Republicans.
Committed voters tend to view the economy through a partisan lens, according to Shepherd. “Their political behaviours, their voting choices, things like that, are not particularly responsive to changes in the agricultural economy,” he said.
Some polling this year, however, did suggest the potential for movement. A poll by the Farm Journal in April found that ۳۵ percent of farmers who “usually” vote Republican and ۱۵ percent who “always” vote Republican were still considering how they would vote.
And September polling from Purdue showed that, for the first time this term, a majority of farmers surveyed think the country is “on the wrong track”.
Even if farmers are swayable, of course, Shoffner still may not be the one to sway them: her campaign has been far outspent by Cotton’s, an established lawmaker who has received funding from interest groups like AIPAC and leaders at companies like Anthropic and Palantir.
“If one side has a massive war chest, and the other side has very limited resources, then that game of tug of war can be won much easier than it should be,” Shepherd said.
And even if farmers do change their votes, they may not decide elections.
McKinney, who is now farming one of the Shoffner family’s former fields, said farmers represent a shrinking percentage of rural voters — their strength now is in organising, not numbers.
Still, even where candidates like Shoffner don’t win, their campaigns might signal to funders that similar races may be competitive in the future or help Democrats win down-ballot seats.
In Arkansas’ second congressional district, for example, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is betting on Democrat Chris Jones. It’s a long-shot campaign, but across the country, at least some long-shot candidates are expected to win.
“All indications are that this is gonna be one of the biggest shifts away from the president’s party that we’ve observed,” Shepherd said.
